As Graphitone says, technically they can be: but I'd caveat that with the possibility that it may be an imperfect solution to both, which will ultimately frustrate.

Even in the one room, with just me in the house (most of the time), I keep the lean-in monitor and the sit-back telebish separate.

Sounds like good advice. We'll do her display first, then we can pick up a cheapo 1080p 40-incher unsmart TV for ~can$150.

Definitely keep them separate. I think if you're looking at anything above 24" up close it needs to be above 1920 x 1080.

My 24" screens are 1920 x 1080 and some days I think I'd like them to be higher res/pixel density because I do sometimes notice it. More so when I go from my laptop which is 13.3" 1920 x 1080 to desktop.

Yeah I wish I had an hdpi desktop display since being spoiled by a 27" imac at work. Probably won't buy one because $$$.

The upshot is we bought a bog-standard 'business model' LG 1080p display, albeit with 1 ms. response (dunno why, mine is the far more typical 5-ms). At first I was disappointed by the image quality though it seems adequate for desktop computing stuff. For MrsD. it was love at first sight and I did not express my photo-centric misgivings. The OSD controller is very odd. It's the tiniest little wobbly controller stick you could imagine, stuck under the display frame. Small, but mighty. Once I worked out the wobble combos, assisted by on screen instructions, I tuned it to "cinema" mode for movie watching, and it turns out to be very, very good for that and coupled with MrsD.'s 2.1 speakers, blows our old motel CRT television out of the water for both streamed (which the tv don't do) and dvds.

Nice new kit feeling! And has the Wife Acceptance Factor.

We will probably go for a bigger flat screen tv eventually, but this should do for a while.